Jay & Intel Investors - Intel's Technology Treadmill Continues
Intel may be announcing a 266 MHz Pentium MMX (Tillamook) for notebook PCs in early January.
This should be just in time to intercept AMD's K6-266 MHz chip!
Read about it here:
zdnet.com
IT managers put the brakes
on notebook upgrades
By John G. Spooner, PC Week Online
12.12.97 5:30 pm ET
IT managers, weary from the rapid
pace of notebook introductions, are
beginning to slow down their upgrade
cycles and base purchase decisions
on price and features rather than
processor speed.
Intel Corp. next month will launch the
mobile version of its 266MHz Pentium
Processor with MMX Technology.
With the rollout, several vendors are
expected to debut high-end
notebooks based on the chip.
But corporate customers say they'll
either skip notebooks based on the
266MHz processor and wait for
portables based on the mobile
Pentium II processor expected next spring, or simply stick with
recently purchased models with slower clock speeds.
"We're going to stay in a time capsule until the year 2000," said
Jim Nathlich, a technical analyst at Chevron Information
Technology Corp., in San Ramon, Calif. "For the general
business [notebook] user, it's going to be that 166MHz
processor for the next three years. The theory behind it is that
we're going to save more money by locking down both the
operating system and the machines."
That strategy won't keep Intel and its OEMs from releasing
faster products, however.
The 266MHz mobile Pentium, which Intel plans to announce
Jan. 12, follows closely on the heels of the 233MHz MMX
processor that Intel introduced in September. The notebook
version of the Pentium II is expected just three or four months
after that.
One of the first companies out of the gate with a 266MHz MMX
Pentium notebook will be NEC Computer Systems Division
Inc., which will add the processor to its high-end Versa 6200
series, said sources close to the Boxboro, Mass., company.
The notebook is expected to cost about $5,000.
Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. is expected to begin
shipping a new Tecra 500 notebook with the 266MHz
processor in January as well, said sources close to the Irvine,
Calif., company.
Dell Computer Corp. will first incorporate the new chip into its
new Inspiron line of notebook PCs, and later will add the
processor to its Latitude line, said sources close to the Round
Rock, Texas, company. A 266MHz Inspiron will sell for about
$4,000, sources said.
Micron Electronics Inc.'s high-end Transport XKE, priced in the
$4,000-to-$5,000 range, will also be updated with the 266MHz
processor. The Nampa, Idaho, company's Transport VLX, with
a base price of about $2,500, currently features Intel's 166MHz
Pentium Processor with MMX Technology. The line will be
refreshed to add Intel's 200MHz and 233MHz mobile
processors, sources said.
All four vendors declined to comment on unannounced
products.
In the meantime, IT managers are worrying more about
deploying existing systems. Chevron plans to roll out starting in
January approximately 6,000 Hewlett-Packard Co. OmniBook
5700 notebooks configured with a 166MHz MMX Pentium,
64MB of RAM, a 4GB hard drive and Windows NT 4.0.
For many IT managers, storage and screen size are more
important than processor speed.
"We've been using IBM's ThinkPad 380 for about a year," said
Frank Calabrese, IT manager at Bose Corp., in Framingham,
Mass. "When we selected it, the differentiators were screen
and hard drive size. None of the decisions to buy the 380 were
[based on] how fast the processors run."
In fact, many corporate users say they don't need the latest and
greatest processor.
"I don't have a user base that requires that level of
sophistication," said John Hodal, computer services manager
at the Naval Training Center, in Great Lakes, Ill. "I'm focusing
more on memory, hard drives and screens than I am on
processors."
Paul |
